


I'll Know You Then

by aziraphae (orphan_account)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, after 3B, as the story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-10-24 16:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17707994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/aziraphae
Summary: What Stiles sees is not at all what he expected: He was expecting the frown to be back and the annoyance to be evident in the way Derek's lips form a thin line, like they so often do around Stiles, but all the boy can see is a softness that seems even more open than before, all of Derek's carefully built walls nowhere to be seen.





	1. Echoes of You

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set after the events of season 3b. I feel like the show kind of glossed over the aftermath of the Nogitsune, so this fanfiction is an attempt to fix that.
> 
> Also, the rest of the McCall Pack will have a more prominent role in later chapters, for now though they are only mentioned.
> 
> For anyone wondering, the title is from "I Knew You When" by Marianas Trench. The chapter title is a song of theirs as well. 
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated!

The Nogitsune is still there after it leaves. Stiles can feel it in the way his hands still shake and how his heart sometimes starts pounding out of nowhere, he can see it in the deep circles under his eyes because he’s yet to come upon one night of restful sleep. But worst of all are the nightmares where he keeps killing and can’t make himself stop, a smile on his face and a mischief in his eyes that look like they belong to him now. He can feel himself slowly deteriorating, like it’s still taking bits and bits of him until there’s nothing of him left.

 

The others don’t know about it. Either he’s too good at pretending or they are too good at ignoring it. Scott occasionally looks at him like he’s not sure he’s really seeing Stiles, but that’s the only indication he gets that what happened actually happened. Though that’s not quite true, if he’s being honest with himself; Malia no longer smiles back when he smiles at her, at least not in a way that doesn’t look forced, and Lydia is the complete opposite of that, never leaving him alone as though she fears it could all start again. It’s not like she’s the only one – he fears it, too.

 

Kira is more awkward around him than she already is anyway, stumbling over her words as she makes excuse after excuse to avoid having a real conversation with him.

 

The only one acting normal around Stiles is Derek, though that’s not of great consolation if all he does is glare at him like he’s the sole reason for everything wrong in the world.

 

The guilt that tries to drown him whenever he allows himself even just one second of thinking about Allison is enough to send him into a panic attack, so he blocks out every thought of her. It’s not what she deserves and he knows it, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

 

That’s also the reason why he keeps Scott at a safe distance. He can’t bear looking at him – even though he’s with Kira now, there will always be something about Scott that connects him to Allison. And the way Stiles’ head works now, still reeling from having someone else in it and not yet recovered from the trauma he went through, he can’t stand being around the alpha. He misses his best friend, but he’d rather miss him than experience another violent flash of helpless terror. He’s not sure he’d survive it this time.

 

When he’s not spending time with Lydia, he cruises the streets or hangs around at home, never really doing anything productive and always on too much caffeine, because sleeping takes him back to the feeling of the Nogitsune in his head and he can’t allow that to happen. The few occasions he dreams about it, he wakes up with a scream and in a cold sweat, heart pounding like it’s trying to rip a hole through his flesh and his ribcage to escape through it, his father’s hand on the back of his head, cradling him with careful fingers while whispering hushed, calming words that Stiles can never remember. What he remembers though is the pain in his dad’s eyes, the utter helplessness that reflects what Stiles is feeling and the anger at what happened to him, so deep and wild that Stiles isn’t quite sure what his dad would do should the Nogitsune ever come back.

 

His father’s reaction is worse than anything else about this whole situation. He doesn’t care that it’s him that suffered the trauma, that he’s the one who is at the receiving end of uncertain glances because they can never be quite sure if it’s actually him in his body – the only thing Stiles cares about in these moments is his dad and the way he’s hurting because of him, simply because his son wasn’t strong enough to close that open door to his mind and invited demons in instead.

 

Lydia sometimes tries talking to him about what happened, but she treats him like glass in mid-air, about to fall and shatter into a million pieces, and it makes him feel more fragile than he already thinks of himself. When Stiles tells her that, he tries not to take on more guilt for the way she deflates at his words, like trying was all that kept her together and without that she’s as lost as he feels.

 

After a few weeks of everyone avoiding him but Lydia, he starts noticing patterns in their behavior: They are the most open with Stiles at pack meetings and the most closed off when they spend one on one time with him. Which he can understand, to some extent, because it’s no secret that dealing with trauma when you have people by your side who you can trust is easier, but Stiles can’t trust any of them. Not like they trust each other, not like he used to, because he can’t even trust himself anymore, so while they might be healing, Stiles feels stuck in place.

 

Some more time passes before he notices differences in Derek’s behavior around him, too. Derek seems to be bothered by his silence in pack meetings, by the way he keeps retreating into himself instead of being the loud-mouthed nerd he was before the Nogitsune. Where he barely looked at him before, now Stiles always meets his gaze when he glances at him, as though Derek never takes his eyes off him. It makes his heart stop for a second before beating faster, and he wonders if it’s still a secret that a part of him feels something more than simple platonic interest in Derek. He promised himself a long time ago that he’d never mention it, but he knows that a part of him will always yearn for the wolf, no matter how stupid and hopeless it is. But he also knows that all he can see in the beta’s eyes is pity and that’s not what he wants, so he stops meeting his stares and endures the pack meetings silently until he can leave again.

 

It goes on like this for a while, until he suddenly gets a phone call from Cora while he’s at Lydia’s place.

 

And if that isn’t the strangest thing to happen after the Nogitsune, he doesn’t know what is. She never calls him, not even once, so he’s not quite sure what to do as he keeps staring at his phone screen, finger hovering over the green button while his mind tries to come up with reasons for her call. Has something happened to the pack? To Derek?

 

He can feel his heart go into overdrive, tripping over itself in its panic, and it must have shown on his face because suddenly he can feel Lydia gripping his knee softly, a reassuring smile on her lips when he looks at her. “Stop worrying,” she whispers, as though she fears the whole volume of her voice doesn’t fit this conversation. “If it’s something bad, we can worry afterwards. Now stop being rude and accept her call.”

 

Sometimes he’s still surprised by her – by how she can be sweet one second and commanding the next, the smile falling from her lips as she stares him into obedience, but he knows she never means anything bad by it. Shit, out of everyone in the pack, Lydia is probably the most likely to do anything for him, anything at all, just to make sure he’s okay.

 

“Cora?” he answers the call, not even bothering to hide the concern or the shakiness in his voice. Lydia is still looking at him from where she’s hunched over her homework, fingers still a grounding presence on his knee, like she knows that’s exactly what Stiles needs. And knowing Lydia, she probably does, reading people as easily as she solves math problems.

 

“Oh, come on, relax,” Cora’s snappish voice replies, and Stiles doesn’t have to be there to know that she’s rolling her eyes. He feels relief rush through him in violent waves and it hurts to breathe once he sucks air in through his lungs, having forgotten to while he waited for Derek’s sister to reply. The line is silent as he’s trying to bring his body back down to normal, to silence the pounding of his heart because e _verything’s fine,_ nothing happened, but it’s not so easy to convince himself of that. Cora doesn’t interrupt him which is another thing that strikes him as alarming, but Lydia is right in his face suddenly, her gentle fingers taking the phone from him and muttering a quick “Be right back” into it before settling it down next to her. Stiles feels her fingers wrap around the sides of his head, forcing him to stare into her warm eyes, no sign of worry in them whatsoever.

 

“Breathe,” she tells him, and it’s easy to obey her command because he’s done this ever since he can remember. If things were different, this moment might have felt intimate to him, more so than just a friend reassuring another friend, but so much time has passed since he last felt anything resembling romantic feelings for Lydia. He still feels drawn to her, but only in a platonic way – like she’s a part of his soul or an extension of it, someone who understands him and knows how to communicate with him without needing words.

 

Once he’s calmed down enough, he returns the soft smile on Lydia’s lips, if only for a few seconds before his eyes drop to the phone again. He reaches for it and holds it to his ear, ignoring his inner voice mocking him for falling apart this pathetically over an unusual phone call.

 

“Hey, what’s up?”

 

If Cora has any thoughts about his breakdown, she doesn’t let on. “I was just calling to ask if Mr. Harris is still as much of a whiny bitch as I remember him being.”

 

Wait, _what?_

 

“Why do you care about Mr. Harris?”

 

There’s a pause that feels heavy in a way Stiles doesn’t understand, like it’s a subject that she doesn’t quite know how to broach, but when she speaks again, her voice shows no vulnerability at all: “I’m going back to school, has Derek not told you about it?”

 

Lydia next to him sits up suddenly from where she went back to doing her homework, attention now completely focused on the phone call. He sees the disbelief on her face, perfectly mirroring what he’s feeling.

 

“No, he hasn’t. You’re coming back? That’s awesome! When do you start?”

 

The silence lasts longer this time. If he knew Cora better, he might be able to read it, but she’s never shown much of herself to him. She doesn’t hide her emotions as well as her brother, but that doesn’t mean that Stiles can’t see her trying every single time things get too personal. It’s like both Hale siblings feel like the world has no right to their emotions or as though the latter is too loud for the universe to handle, since they already struggle at handling them themselves. Sometimes Stiles wants to shout at them that _no, the world doesn’t work like this,_ but that was before the Nogitsune. Now he completely understands why someone would try to hide their trauma and resent talking about it.

 

“This Monday.” Cora’s answer is short, neutral, but there’s an edge to it that tells Stiles she’s nervous. He has no idea how to comfort her though, so he tries for humor: “That’s great, then you can join our forces and annoy Mr. Harris with us because yes, he’s still a dick and he hates me more than Derek.”

 

“Derek doesn’t hate you.” The reply is instantaneous, quick and sure, and it’s his turn to be silent. Stiles doesn’t know how to respond to that; he’s stopped thinking Derek hates him a long time ago, but having it confirmed by someone – not just someone, _Derek’s sister_ – is not something he ever imagined happening. Or yes, he’s imagined it, how could he not have, but he never thought it would actually happen, least of all with him being a witness of said words.

 

It’s Lydia who breaks the silence this time, taking the phone from his loose grasp and holding it to her own ear.

 

“Do you want me to pick you up on Monday? It’ll be easier to arrive at school with me as a friend by your side, trust me.”

 

That’s not quite true, but he bites his lips to refrain himself from saying that. Ever since Lydia’s banshee side has first revealed itself and she walked around in the woods naked, things haven’t quite been the same. She’s still popular, there’s no questioning that, but she belongs to Stiles’ level of _weird_ now, too. And with Jackson gone, so are his friends, all except for Danny. And that’s left Lydia with only Danny and Stiles as really close friends. She’s part of the pack as well, obviously, but they aren’t close anymore. Not after what happened with Stiles.

 

He hears Cora’s muffled agreement before the girls say their goodbyes, but Stiles doesn’t register it quickly enough to either force the concerned look on his face away or to drop his gaze. He meets Lydia’s and she reads him like she would read a book, eyes skimming from side to side, before a frown settles on her beautiful face.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

Stiles looks away and turns to his homework again, but he can still feel Lydia’s eyes on him. And though she drops the subject, he knows that a part of her mourns the loss of her status, even if her pride will never allow her to admit it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Later that day, Derek calls him while he’s still at Lydia’s. Which, these days, is almost as unusual as Cora calling him, but he doesn’t let the anxiety take over this time.

 

“Derek?”

 

“Where are you?” comes the court reply, deep and fast, like he’s talking in a rushed voice because he doesn’t have a lot of time, and now Stiles _does_ panic.

 

“At Lydia’s. Why?”

 

Stiles curses himself for never being able to hide what he feels, voice shaky again and tongue stuttering through the words. Lydia is back at his side in an instant, once again with her hand on his knee, and he honestly can’t tell what he would do if she wasn’t there for him.

 

Derek pauses. _Someday these idiots are going to kill me with all this unnecessary suspense,_ Stiles thinks, but he’s not given much time to get more anxious because Derek starts talking again: “Nothing. Forget I called.” And then he hangs up.

 

What?

 

Stiles lowers the phone and stares at it, fully knowing that the confusion must be written all over his face now, and he’s expecting a comment from Lydia, but she stays uncharacteristically silent. When he turns to look at her however, there’s a knowing look on her face and a hint of a smile on her lips. He’s tempted to ask what she’s thinking, but he knows that Lydia would tell him if she wanted him to know and that asking won’t get him anywhere, so he shakes his head and forces himself to get back to working on his homework.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It happens again the next day. And the one after. And every day after that. At first, he’s sure that Derek only calls because he wants to prove some kind of point that Stiles hasn’t figured out yet, something along the lines of how Stiles never called when he felt like something wasn’t quite right with himself after the Nemeton and how easy it actually is to _just call,_ but the longer it goes on, the more Stiles doubts it’s just intended as some form of punishment. Even though the wolf sounds angry and defiant the first few times, as if he’s blaming Stiles for making him call in the first place, the boy notices the increasing absence of those emotions as the days go by.

 

On Monday, the day of Cora’s first day back at school, Derek calls him early in the morning. Stiles has barely woken up a few minutes ago, a headache from having slept no more than three hours, and he grumbles under his breath while reaching for his phone.

 

“Good morning, sunshine.”

 

“Stiles,” Derek says, his voice serious, and Stiles sobers up immediately. Sure, the wolf usually isn’t a very humorous person anyway, but he has a serious tone and a _serious_ tone. And this morning, it was the latter.

 

“What’s wrong?” He sits up to slip out of his pajama pants and into his jeans, rubbing the sleep from his eyes all at the same time while trying to keep the phone lodged tightly between his shoulder and his ear. He fails to button his jeans because he fears the phone will fall from its secure place if he leans over too much, but he’s not dressing for efficiency anyway – he’s doing it to keep his body from going crazy again, to prevent the panic attack that is already lurking close to the surface and only waiting for its time to erupt.

 

“Are you… getting dressed?”

 

“Um, yeah?”

 

“Okay,” Derek responds, sounding strangely strangled, and it only takes Stiles a second to catch on.

 

“I wasn’t naked!” he right out screams into the phone, before he realizes he probably sounds like an idiot. “I’m changing out of my pajamas, genius. Do you sleep naked or why do you assume everyone else does?”

 

“Yes,” is the simple reply he gets, but it definitely does _not_ have a simple effect on Stiles. He can’t help where his mind jumps to, picturing things that he’s always suppressed around Derek, and the phone drops from its place on his shoulder and lands inelegantly on the floor with a loud crash. He only stares at it for a few seconds, listening to the distant voice of Derek asking if he’s okay, before his brain goes back online and he jumps after his phone, sitting on the floor and this time holding it to his ear with his own damn hand.

 

“Yeah, everything’s fine, absolutely great. Just dropped the phone, nothing unusual, typical Stilinski stuff. Shit, I hope I didn’t crack the screen, I didn’t even check– nope, everything’s fine, thank God, otherwise my dad would have killed me. Also, TMI, I did definitely not want to know that, it was a theoretical question and you shouldn’t have answered, now I’ve got mental images that will scar me for life. Anyway, what’s up?”

 

Even though Derek doesn’t voice it, he can hear the silent _You’re weird_ echoing through the line in the way the wolf sighs deeply, and he’s completely fine with that. Better that than Derek figuring out that the dumbest human in the pack has somehow managed to catch feelings for the former alpha.

 

“Look out for Cora today,” a long pause, one that Stiles strangely doesn’t seem inclined to interrupt, then, “please.”

 

“Sure, no problem.”

 

This pause is longer, and Stiles is almost certain that Derek hung up and he somehow didn’t notice, but just as he’s about to pull the phone from his ear, he’s talking again: “Thank you.” And then he hangs up.

 

Weird. Derek saying _please_ and _thank you?_ To Stiles? Yeah, he must really be worried about his sister if he goes to such great lengths to make sure Stiles follows through with it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Stiles waits for Lydia and Cora near the school’s entrance. He can see Lydia’s blue car standing in the same slot it’s always in, parked perfectly in between two other cars. A few minutes have passed since he’s first spotted it, but the girls have yet to get out. The distance makes it hard to figure out if they are arguing or simply talking, but he can see Lydia’s hands moving, explaining things like he does – using the full range of his body instead of staying idle, like that’s exactly what it takes to get the words across. From what he can tell, Cora looks unimpressed, but her eyes keep flitting over to Lydia and away, staring out the windshield and looking at passing students. Stiles can’t tell if it’s a nervous habit or if Cora is just eager to _get on with it._

 

With one nod from Cora, the conversation is over and they both open their doors, Lydia immediately waving at him while Cora simply stares. Stiles waves back and looks questioningly from Lydia to Cora as they walk over to him, but the redhead pointedly raises her eyebrows and Derek’s sister just ignores him. _Well, great start,_ he thinks.

 

“What’s your first class?” he asks Cora, but it’s Lydia who replies.

 

“English. She has most classes with us, with added band practice on Wednesday.”

 

“You play an instrument?”

 

Cora refuses to meet his eyes and stares at passing students instead, face seemingly impassive though he can tell it’s a lie from the way Lydia looks at her with a soft and compassionate expression. The brunette barely glances at him for a second before turning away again, but it’s enough to see parts of the pain she must be carrying ever since the Hale House fire.

 

“I started before–,” she cuts herself off, unsure how to continue, but then she clears her throat and the emotionally repressed Cora is back. “Before I went away, I played the clarinet. I continued in South America. Lydia told me to join band practice again, so yeah, that’s what I’m doing.”

 

Stiles manages to keep his face impressively neutral despite the touchy subject.

 

“Sounds great! Then we have to introduce you to Danny, he’s also in the school band. I think he plays the trumpet? And he’s a pretty cool dude anyway, I’m sure you’ll get along fine.”

 

Though Cora also considers herself a part of the pack, she rarely attends the pack meetings, so her and Danny have only caught glimpses of each other so far.

 

Cora nods and doesn’t say anything in response, but he can see the corners of her mouth twitching slightly, as though she wants to smile. But it’s Cora, so of course she doesn’t allow that to happen.

 

Stiles still doesn’t know what to think of all the similarities between Cora and Derek. Derek is colder and more closed off, but that might just be because he’s had more practice. The only person he’s ever been a real person around after the Hale House fire was Laura, and Laura has been dead now for what feels like an eternity. The only family he had left before Cora returned was Peter, and Peter’s character traits and goals are morally ambiguous at best, so Derek could never learn how to trust his uncle again. Which is good, honestly, because Peter is nothing more than a piece of shit in Stiles’ eyes anyway. But that left Derek without family for so long and that surely hasn’t helped the coldness he has covered himself in.

 

In contrast to her brother, Cora had a family before she left South America. She was part of a pack, one that provided for her and loved her, if how she talks about them occasionally is anything to go by. But trauma made her cold, too, and Stiles has no idea what kind of person she was before she stumbled her way into her pack in South America. Maybe she was like Derek. Maybe the person who she is now has already fought to be softer again, something that Derek has yet to do.

 

Or maybe he is trying, too. Maybe his way of trying is looking out for Stiles in pack meetings or asking Stiles to make sure that he tries to make Cora feel welcome at school – and maybe, just maybe, his way of trying is calling Stiles every day to make sure he is okay and hasn’t wandered off again.

 

His train of thought is interrupted when he sees Lydia linking her arm with Cora’s and manoeuvring her toward the door, an elegant gesture with her free hand over her shoulder ordering Stiles to follow.

 

He catches up with them in seconds, holding the door open for them. Once inside, all three of them freeze – the whole school is looking at them, pointing fingers at Cora like she’s done something wrong, like coming back years after your whole house burned down and most of your family died just isn’t something _you do,_ and he sees Lydia’s hold around the wolf’s arm tighten, pulling her away and into one of the side corridors. Stiles trails closely after them, positioning himself in front of Cora once she settles with her back against a wall to hide her from view as well as he can. Lydia stands right next to her, letting go of the brunette’s arm but not backing off even one step.

 

“Are you okay?” the banshee asks, and while Cora stubbornly nods, Stiles can see her hand shaking where it combs through her hair nervously. A part of him feels glad that he at least knows one of Cora’s nervous ticks now, but he pushes that thought aside easily because his concern for her is far more prominent right now.

 

“Ignore them,” Stiles says. “They are all idiots anyway. This is not the first time they’ve behaved like this around someone coming back to school and I honestly doubt it will be the last time, but they just don’t know better. They will get over it eventually, I promise. And if they don’t, then you’ve still got us. We’re not going anywhere.”

 

He waits for Cora to nod again and look at the floor before he turns to Lydia pointedly, but she’s already looking at him. There are faint tears in her eyes, ones that he knows she could just blink away right this second, but she doesn’t and that means she wants Stiles to see them. He gives her a soft smile, one that conveys things that he’s never said before and probably never will, something like _These losers don’t deserve you, they never have_ or _You’re way better off without them,_ and Lydia seems to understand him because she returns his smile and nods slightly, as though she’s known for a long time that he’s right but only now allowed herself to acknowledge it.

 

After a few more seconds of Cora leaning quietly against the wall, she rights herself again, a hard look on her face, and pushes through the space between Lydia and Stiles, forcing her way through them and back into the main hall. She’s up the stairs before either of them can follow, and they just look at each other wordlessly, before shrugging and swiftly going after her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The entirety of the day before chemistry goes over quite quickly. Every time someone dares to stare at Cora with anything even so much as resembling a hostile expression, Lydia throws them an ice-cold look that stops those stares effectively and immediately. It silences the rude whispers as well, for which he is especially thankful because though Cora seems to brush the looks off easily, the words are much harder to ignore. Her shoulders hunch and she drops her gaze whenever someone says something wrong. Stiles barely hears half of it, but with the wolf’s special hearing, he doesn’t want to imagine what Cora can hear the others say when they think she’s far enough away for their words to go unheard.

 

Later in chemistry, which is their last class before school ends for that day, they introduce Cora to Danny. Stiles barely has to utter a few words before they start talking about band practice, and the wolf’s eyes visibly light up, excitement so evident in her entire body language in a way Stiles has never observed before.

 

And Danny seems so much happier in this moment, too. Since Ethan left and they all found out that Danny actually knows about this whole supernatural shitshow that has been happening the past few months, he has been a part of the McCall Pack as well, but he became quieter, less outgoing and more reclusive. It’s like Ethan took a part of him with him to wherever the hell he’s disappeared to. Of course Stiles understands why he couldn’t stay, he just can’t understand why they both still have to suffer for it.

 

Danny sometimes tells him about Ethan and how they still talk on the phone every once in a while – though Ethan is apparently not happier away from here, he still seems sure he can’t come back without falling apart. And though Danny never says so, Stiles is sure that he wonders why Ethan can’t just be here with him, since being here or staying away doesn’t seem to make much of a difference anyway. Fuck falling apart; if it happens, they can deal with it together. But Ethan doesn’t think that way, so they are both miserable.

 

But not now. Now Danny has the brightest smile on his face since Ethan left, and Cora’s eyes don’t show a hint of pain.

 

He looks at Lydia, trying to meet her gaze, but she doesn’t even notice. Instead she keeps staring at Cora, a faint smile on her lips that Stiles isn’t sure she knows is there. The banshee seems mesmerized by her, like in this very moment, Cora is the center of her entire universe.

 

Stiles can’t help but wonder if he looks like that around Derek, too.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

After school, Stiles says his goodbyes to the girls, waiting at the door while watching them leave. It’s bizarre how well they get along, and he feels like it mirrors his relationship with Lydia quite well. Though he’s fairly certain that between Cora and Lydia, there might actually be the start of some very confusing feelings involved.

 

He vows to ask Lydia about it later, when he turns around and stops dead in his tracks.

 

Derek’s here. Leaning against his jeep.

 

Cool, cool, cool.

_Calm the fuck down_ , Stiles harshly commands his suddenly suspiciously fast beating heart.

 

Even though his eyes met Derek’s and he knows that the wolf is aware that he has been noticed, Stiles allows himself a second of looking away and observing other students instead, trying to calm his nerves to prevent looking like a complete idiot once he joins Derek at his jeep.

 

Then he decides, _fuck it, Derek can’t possibly think worse of me than he already does,_ and goes over anyway.

 

“I heard you earlier,” Derek says once Stiles is in hearing distance. He looks carefully neutral, as though he doesn’t want to reveal too much. Too much of what Stiles has no idea, but Derek is probably just secretive for fun nowadays, so he tries not to focus on that. “What you said to Cora. Thank you.”

 

Stiles has to consciously stop himself from uttering a joke about how Derek is being a _creeper wolf_ again, an impulsive evasion tactic that comes up every time the wolf says something that reminds Stiles yet again why he somehow seems to like him so much. Though Derek’s most often an absolute idiot and therefore Stiles shouldn’t like him _at all._

 

Yeah. Like that fixes it.

 

“It’s the truth,” he immediately replies instead. “And I hope you know that the same thing applies to you, too.”

 

Derek stays quiet after that, staring at Stiles with intense green eyes that don’t look as intimidating as he expected them to. No, there’s something off about them – there’s still a frown between the wolf’s eyebrows, but it’s not as deep and angry as it usually is. It seems more confused now, as though Derek just can’t make sense of Stiles, no matter how much he tries.

 

And that. That means something. _It has to,_ Stiles thinks. What he isn’t sure, but it must mean _something._

 

When the silence stretches out for too long, Stiles opens his mouth to blurt out some of the billions of dumb jokes he keeps in his head, but that’s when Derek decides to nod silently, stare at him more intently for a few seconds like he’s trying to telepathically tell Stiles _something,_ before turning around and walking away.

 

And, well. What the fuck.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

After spending a few hours at home with his dad, Stiles goes over to Lydia’s, fully intending to ask her every single question that he can think of about what she might feel for Cora, but when he gets there, Derek’s sister is already here.

 

And weirdly, that doesn’t even surprise him.

 

He greets them and sits down on the bed next to Cora, raising both of his eyebrows at Lydia when Cora looks away from him to stare down at her math homework with a very, very confused expression on her face. Lydia just raises one of her eyebrows in return, as if she has no idea why Stiles acts like this is _unusual,_ and then she takes the math book out of Cora’s hands gently and starts showing her how to solve the problem.

 

A part of him feels like he’s intruding on something important here, but Stiles heavily objects against the idea of going back home to his dad. He can barely stand being around him, what with the overly concerned looks constantly being thrown his way and the careful words that never seem quite sure if they are allowed to be said. Of course he loves his dad, no questioning that, but he needs some distance from him. For now.

 

He can’t have constant reminders around him that make it impossible to forget about the Nogitsune – his own mind is already doing enough of that.

 

So he stays, doing his homework and checking the clock every so often to know when his dad has definitely left their house, before deciding that it’s time to leave. Stiles waves the girls goodbye and rushes down the stairs, opens the door and stops dead in his tracks. For the second time today and for the exact same reason.

 

He feels like he’s experiencing a very unwelcome déjà-vu.

 

Derek just stares back at him, eyebrows raising ever so slightly at Stiles’ confused expression. He gestures with one hand over his shoulder, the hint of an annoyed look on his face like he can’t believe how stupid Stiles is. “I’m picking Cora up.”

 

Oh, right. That makes sense.

 

And because Stiles has no brain to mouth filter, he says as much.

 

Derek, bless him, just rolls his eyes and steps aside to let him pass. But before Stiles can leave, there’s a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back from where he is trying to walk past Derek. He looks over his shoulder and finds Cora there, looking entirely too pleased with herself, a wide smile on her lips and a glint of something dangerous in her eyes.

 

That look on her face will never not be scary.

 

“Hey, Derek,” she says in a sing-song voice and squeezes Stiles’ shoulder, looking away from him to her brother. Stiles catches a glimpse of Lydia walking down the stairs before he turns back around to face Derek again. He tries to shrug Cora’s hand off his shoulder, but that only makes her tighten her grip, claws pushing unpleasantly but surprisingly gently against his skin.

 

It seems like she’s stepped over some unknown line because Derek doesn’t just look annoyed now, he looks straight up angry and ready to murder. And well, if Stiles thinks Cora’s face is scary, this is _so_ much worse. Derek’s hand reaches out and Stiles takes a step back immediately, as if he fears he will get hit for making his sister behave like an asshole around him, and even though he _knows_ Derek would never do that, he can’t stop himself. He overreacts to everything nowadays, he even flinches sometimes when his dad tries to touch him, and it doesn’t come as a surprise that this situation elicits the same reaction.

 

But Derek’s face falls, a flash of something entirely too close to hurt flickering over it for barely one second, but it’s replaced by a neutral mask in the blink of an eye and Stiles is left doubting if he even saw that expression at all. And yet, when Cora swiftly pulls her hand away from his shoulder like she saw that expression as well, he stands corrected.

 

Weird. It’s not like Derek’s ever cared much about Stiles’ behavior around him.

 

Right?

 

There’s a silent standoff for a few, very long seconds, before Cora’s voice breaks it.

 

“I was going to ask if you want to join us and have Derek drive you home, but I just now spotted your jeep, so nevermind. Bye.”

 

She brushes against him gently as she walks past him, as if she’s trying to apologize to him without actually saying it out loud. Once Cora’s out of the door, she grips her brother’s arm a lot less gently, almost violently even, and forces him to turn around to follow her to the Camaro.

 

Stiles finds himself standing at the door expressionlessly, watching the Hale siblings get into Derek’s car and drive away.

 

He turns around to look at Lydia – she’s standing right behind him, a sly smile on her face, and yeah, sometimes he really hates her. Like, _really_ hates her.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing,” she says, but she’s still smiling, and she doesn’t stop there. “Just interesting how Derek always gets so defensive around you, that’s all.”

 

_Defensive?_

 

“What do you mean? He just looked angry to me? I mean, I guess I get it, Cora’s doing pretty good and it’s only me that somehow gets her to be a massive dick, which like, honestly, I completely get that, who doesn’t – but why would that make him defensive?”

 

“Oh, honey,” Lydia sighs. “No offense, but sometimes you’re so much blinder than you know.”

 

And with that, she shuts the door in Stiles’ face and leaves him standing alone on her front porch, utter confusion entirely occupying his mind and drowning out everything else.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Later that evening, Stiles is doing the rest of his homework when there’s a sudden knock at his window. It takes him by such surprise that he actually flinches – it used to be nothing unusual to have someone knock at his window, whether it was Scott or Derek, he got used to it eventually, but so many things have changed after the Nogitsune. _Far too many,_ a quiet and wistful voice in his head whispers.

 

Stiles takes a second to compose himself, a small and frustrated sigh escaping his lips that he can’t quite manage to suppress, before he goes over to the window and opens it.

 

“Talk,” is all the greeting he gets from Derek as he climbs through Stiles’ window and proceeds to settle against it, arms crossed over his chest and frown in place between his eyebrows.

 

Stiles feels like he’s missing something.

 

“What?”

 

“Talk,” Derek repeats unhelpfully and without any attempt at explaining himself.

 

“About what?” he throws back, but Derek’s face suddenly turns very neutral, too neutral to be natural, and Stiles knows the answer even before it leaves his lips.

 

“About the Nogitsune.”

 

That’s all it takes for the dread to settle deep in his stomach again, making his rational mind shut down in record speed as the anxious mess in his head takes over almost instantly, telling him to get out of here _now._

 

“No,” he bites out harshly, turning away from Derek and reaching for the door, feeling like he has to flee from this conversation or he will break apart into a million pieces, but the wolf is there in an instant, positioning himself in between Stiles and the door, effectively shutting off his escape route and trapping him inside his room.

 

And that, that is decidedly the wrong thing to do in this situation.

 

Stiles feels like a cornered animal suddenly, with a predator right in front of him that is trying to eat him whole, and he feels the panic start to take over, but anger is a much easier emotion to deal with than that, so he explodes into a whir of words, lashing out at any weak point he can find, just to get this over with.

 

“Talk? That’s big coming from you, you never talk about anything! Don’t come in here after fucking _weeks_ and order me around to do anything because I won’t do shit for you. Fuck, I mean, what are you even thinking? Not even Cora seems to be willing to talk to you, if the way she shuts down almost as quickly as you as soon as things get too personal is anything to go by, so just do us both a favor and _fuck off._ ”

 

This time, the hurt on Derek’s face isn’t surprising and it doesn’t leave as quickly as earlier – in fact, it doesn’t leave at all. It makes him look so vulnerable, so very broken in a way he has never allowed Stiles to see, and that’s all it takes to quiet the rage in him immediately, the frightened animal evaporating into nothingness and leaving only heavy regret behind.

 

“I’m sorry,” he can hear himself whispering, so softly that he doubts that even the werewolf’s hearing can pick it up, but Derek’s nod tells him otherwise. The hurt expression doesn’t leave and Stiles wants to kick himself for that, but Derek doesn’t disappear either and that’s a good thing. He hopes.

 

“Let’s sit down,” is the first thing the wolf says after a few more seconds of silence, taking Stiles gently by the arm and pushing him backwards until his knees hit his bed and he’s forced to sit. Derek settles down next to him at first, but when the silence continues and neither of them speaks, he moves over to Stiles’ headboard to lean against it instead. He motions for Stiles to sit next to him, but when the latter makes no motion to follow, Derek just nods once and doesn’t push it.

 

“I noticed your reaction earlier,” he begins, as if Stiles has asked a question and he’s answering it, holding eye contact. “The way you flinched away from me.”

 

Stiles lowers his head guiltily at that, staring at his hands and twisting his fingers restlessly because yeah, of course Derek noticed. Stiles was there and witnessed it with his own eyes.

 

“At first, I thought you were still scared of me,” Derek continues. “But we both know that hasn’t been the case for months now. And then Cora said something in the car about how she didn’t know you’d react like that, and then it made complete sense. It’s the Nogitsune.”

 

When Stiles stays quiet at that, refusing to meet Derek’s eyes, there’s a noise coming from beside him, the sound of sheets rustling quietly, and it’s that that finally makes him look at the wolf. He expected him to be in the motion of getting up and leaving, but what he sees instead makes his eyes widen in disbelief – Derek has scooted lower and is resting against his pillow now, arms crossed over his chest, but he’s looking at him so openly that something in Stiles’ heart aches. If the circumstances were different, he might interpret something else into this, but he knows that it’s more likely that Derek just wants himself to appear as little of a threat as possible. Nevertheless, his heart picks up speed again, and he silently begs Derek not to mention it.

 

He doesn’t. Instead he stays quiet, staring at Stiles with all the patience of the world in his eyes, and despite all the guilt he’s already feeling, Stiles can feel the defensiveness take over, yet again manifesting itself as harsh and hot anger pouring out of him.

 

“You know, maybe I’d be more willing to talk about this crap if I wasn’t the only one opening up about my personal trauma. But since you’re the most closed off person I’ve ever met and "trusting someone” is like a foreign language to you, that’s unlikely to happen, so would you just please _back the fuck off_ and leave it alone.”

 

He can see Derek’s walls settling back in place, a dark coldness closing like a fist around his emotions and swallowing them whole. Stiles wants to say something, something about how unfair it is that Derek is allowed to suffer in private while he isn’t, or maybe he wants to confess how he still hasn’t slept right since the Nogitsune left and how he can’t concentrate enough to know how he fucked up this time when it’s clearly Derek’s fault because he’s an absolute hypocrite, but he sees the hint of challenge in the wolf’s eyes, as if he’s daring Stiles to say the wrong thing so he can shout at him like he usually does, and Stiles is too tired to play this game.

 

He gets up and brushes imaginary dirt from his legs, all the while refusing to meet Derek’s eyes, and forces a smile onto his lips. It doesn’t take a genius to know that it’s fake, but it’s a habit Stiles can’t seem to get rid of, no matter how often he’s tried. But he tells himself that Derek doesn’t care anyway, not about his psychological well-being at least. All Derek wants from him is to function like he used to; sharp tongue, red lines in his hands and connecting dots faster than any of the rest of the pack ever could.

 

Stiles misses the times when he actually believed that Derek hates him. But he can’t anymore. Not after all the things Derek’s done for him, not after Stiles has seen his walls come down on his own accord time and time again, for none other than Stiles.

 

"Well, this was fun,” he hears himself mutter, voice dripping of purposefully enhanced sarcasm, and he hates himself for still clinging onto that damned defensiveness. “It’s always nice having conversations where mostly I talk and all you do is glare at me. Makes me feel really appreciated, thanks, dude. Can’t wait to do this again sometime.”

 

He pauses, waiting for Derek to leave, but when the silence stretches out for too long, he glances over to see the beta still lying on his bed, in the exact same position as before, only now his eyes are closed and his arms are no longer crossed in front of him, instead resting at his sides while his fingers are loosely tangled in Stiles’ sheets. Something about it makes Stiles freeze, mouth hanging half-open and ready to make another unnecessary remark about anything his mind can come up with, but no words leave his lips. He closes his mouth, wets his lips and tries again, but he can’t find it in himself to disturb what looks so close to peace on Derek’s face – there’s no frown in the space between the wolf’s brows, his lips aren’t pressed together in annoyance and his hands aren’t forming fists in anger. If Stiles doesn’t know better, he’d say that Derek almost looks at rest, but he doubts the beta could ever feel something even resembling that. Not after what has happened to him and how he still keeps clinging onto it, like it’s his lifeline in a sea of pain and it’s the only thing keeping him afloat.

 

Stiles tries to shrug it off and walks out of his room and into the bathroom, turning the lock and leaning heavily against the door. He doesn’t know why breathing feels so hard all of a sudden or why his hands are cold and sweaty where they are gripping his hair and brushing against his skin or why his heart is beating so loudly, but he doesn’t allow himself to think about it. He pushes off the door and makes for the sink, splashing himself in the face with ice-cold water until he’s unable to breathe and has to force himself to stop. Stiles’ hands find purchase on the sink’s edge as he rights his posture, but without meaning to he catches a glimpse of his reflection – he sees the dark color under his eyes accompanied by a familiar redness, and dread settles low in his gut before he silences it, gripping the sink tighter and hanging his head, breathless for a different reason now. _You’re fine,_ he tells himself. _It’s gone, it’s only you in there._

 

Minutes pass before he deems himself sane enough to meet Derek again. Every part of him hopes that he left as soon as Stiles exited his room, but his perception is still skewed and he has no way of knowing what real and likely expectations are anymore. All he can do is prepare for the worst, even if he doesn’t know what that is.

 

It’s no huge surprise to see Derek’s figure on his bed in the exact same spot it was before. The only difference is the deep darkness in Stiles’ room that tells him that he was gone longer than he originally thought, and he can’t help but worry what Derek might have deduced from his nervous breakdown in the bathroom. Not that Stiles himself is entirely sure what it was about, though he has a very strong idea, but the possibility of Derek finding out before him terrifies him.

 

Without a word he reaches for his pillow and clutches it to his chest, turning around quickly in an attempt to leave his room again to sleep downstairs on the couch instead. No way is he going to lie down on his bed with Derek there as well.

 

But he’s not quick enough to evade the hand reaching out for him, warm fingers closing around his wrist and keeping him from running, a firm weight pulling him backwards until he’s forced to sit down next to Derek again. Stiles tries to wrench his hand free, twists it this way and that way in hopes of getting away, but he isn’t really expecting it to work anyway, so he stops after a few seconds. He finds himself staring at Derek’s fingers instead of meeting his eyes, even though he can feel the heaviness of his green stare deep in his bones.

 

His other hand is playing with the pillow’s soft edge, ripping lose threads from it and twirling them around his fingers, as he waits for Derek to either let go or start talking. When neither of that happens, he gives up with a sigh and raises his head to meet the beta’s eyes. What he sees is not at all what he expected: He was expecting the frown to be back and the annoyance to be evident in the way his lips form a thin line, like they so often do around Stiles, but all the boy can see is a softness that seems even more open than before, all his carefully built walls nowhere to be seen.

 

The defensiveness drips out of him until there’s no longer any of it left, and all it leaves behind is a sudden exhaustion that makes his eyelids feel like an endless weight as they fall shut without his consent. He’s been tired for days now, but god, he’s still never felt _this_ exhausted. He supposes it’s his body’s way of punishing him for the weeks filled with barely any sleep at all, but that still doesn’t explain why it happens exactly _now._

 

Stiles can feel Derek’s fingers leave his wrist as his other hand guides him to lie down by his shoulder, and despite his ire resolution to refuse to sleep in his own bed with Derek, he doesn’t fight it. The other hand must have taken the pillow from him and put it back to where it was before, because his head meets welcomed softness instead of the less comfortable surface of his mattress. A soft brush of what feels like knuckles against his cheek is all he remembers before sleep takes him under.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Stiles wakes up with a scream again, like so many other nights before, sweat dripping from every part of his body, causing his bed sheets to cling to him when he sits up, and he’s expecting his dad to appear any minute now to comfort him, but it’s not his hand that settles against the back of his head this time.

 

He can feel the difference in the way his dad’s fingers always tremble when they brush through his hair, pulling too roughly at single strands of it because they get tangled in his hands, but this hand is steady, combing through the short hair at the lower part of his neck.

 

He violently shivers when he remembers that it’s Derek, he fell asleep next to _Derek,_ but he can’t focus on that thought for long because the panic takes over again, as it always does. He starts shaking, his entire body quivering in absolute terror, and the hand at his neck travels lower, brushing over his back, up and down and then back up again, and Stiles imagines it must feel disgusting because the sweat is clinging to him like a second skin. But Derek doesn’t stop – he places his arm around Stiles’ shoulders instead and pulls him against him, lying backwards against the mattress again as he continues to hold him, Stiles on his side with his head on Derek’s chest while the wolf rests on his back, whispering sweet nothings into the darkness that Stiles can’t understand, like it’s a foreign language that he hasn’t learned to speak yet.

 

It feels so completely peaceful that he calms down before long, breathing shallowly against Derek’s skin where his head is tucked between his chin and his neck.

 

Awkwardness settles over him before he can stop it, making his heartbeat flutter yet again because this, this right here, this feels too much like something more than platonic affection and he can’t ignore it this time, no matter how comfortable he is and no matter how much he tries. He’s about to pull away when Derek’s hold around him tightens, as though he knows what Stiles was about to do and he doesn’t want to entertain the thought of Stiles moving out of reach, effectively keeping him pinned against him instead.

 

And that. Well. That’s not what Stiles was expecting to happen, not _ever._

 

“Sleep,” he hears Derek murmur, but he doesn’t only hear it – he can feel the vibrations of his deep voice in the chest he’s lying on with half of his body, and it feels so intimate that he’s tempted to move away again, but Derek’s hand softly brushes over his back as he whispers into the darkness: “Sleep.”

 

It’s as if Derek isn’t only a werewolf but also a wizard, because Stiles falls asleep instantly.

 

When he opens his eyes the next morning, Derek is gone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

They don’t talk about it. Only two days have passed since _the incidence,_ but they don’t talk about it. No, Derek seems to avoid him instead because two days ago is also the last time he has seen him, even though Stiles knows that Derek picks up his sister from school every day. He tries not to let it bother him, but of course it hurts – Derek’s whole behavior screams of regret, and yeah, the rejection Stiles is experiencing from that stings deeply.

 

Apparently it can be read on his face because not even one day passes without a sign from Derek, and Lydia immediately picks up on something being wrong. She asks him about it, repeatedly, but he just brushes her off until she eventually drops it.

 

“Don’t think you’re off the hook, though,” she says, and he already dreads the next time she decides to be cruel enough to pester him with questions again.

 

Cora keeps shooting him inquisitive glances as well, and while Lydia’s still seem somewhat puzzled, Cora seems to have put two and two together. Or rather not exactly two and two because how would she know that Derek slept in Stiles’ bed? Though now that he’s thinking about it, her sense of smell has probably told her as much, since Stiles imagines that Derek must have reeked of him after he left.

 

She doesn’t try talking to him about it, but her obvious stares aren’t really less uncomfortable either.

 

Another day passes and he’s sitting at his desk, unsuccessfully attempting to do his homework, kicking his feet and sighing in annoyance and frustration every few minutes, when Derek calls again. His heart immediately starts pounding inside his chest, so violently that he fears the wolf might be able to hear it through the phone if Stiles picks up now, but he has no reason to decline the call. And he doesn’t want to, anyway. Stiles has been waiting for this call for days now, even though he would have preferred Derek to show up here in person, but getting a call from him is the second best thing to that. Though he feels the anxiety course through his veins immediately because he has absolutely no idea what Derek wants to talk about, he picks up the phone anyway.

 

“Hey,” Stiles answers the phone softly, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips despite his best effort at keeping a neutral expression.

 

“Where are you?”

 

He is no longer surprised by those words, but he’s still confused every time Derek says them, like he’s still not sure why he would. Or at least he was, because after Derek stayed over for the night, he knows that the wolf cares about him a lot more than he originally thought. Before that, Stiles always used to ask himself one question: _Why does he care?_ Stiles knows that it’s a cruel thought because the beta has proven time and time again that he cares about him, fuck, even Cora confirmed it, but a part of him still refused to acknowledge it. He’s made so many excuses for Derek’s behavior in the past, ranging from needing Stiles alive in order to continue the research everyone else seems to suck at, to making sure he’s still in the land of the living so Scott doesn’t go off the hinge and accidentally turns into some beast like Peter. It’s hard to let go of habits once they’ve formed, so while his rational mind knew that Derek might care, the fragile – and more dominant – part of him didn’t believe it. Not until a few days ago, at least. Because now? Now he knows that Derek must care.

 

“At home,” he answers, though it sounds more like a question than a statement. He’s been silently begging Derek to explain himself ever since this started, but the wolf either didn’t reply or hung up before Stiles could ask any questions. Something must have changed after Derek stayed over though, because this time the line doesn’t disconnect and, once he stops fidgeting in anticipation, he can hear Derek’s soft breathing, like he’s waiting for Stiles to say something else.

 

“Where are you?” he returns the question, if only mostly out of spite because he’s never getting clear answers from Derek anyway, but to Stiles’ surprise, he still doesn’t hang up. Derek seems to think about what to say, so Stiles waits patiently, not intending to rush someone who usually never allows himself to talk.

 

“I’m looking for a proper apartment. Do you want to join me?”

 

Stiles pulls the phone from his ear and gapes at it. _What the fuck?_ That is not what he was expecting _at all._

 

He has no idea how to respond to that. Asking why Derek decided to choose _Stiles_ of all people to join him will certainly make the wolf uninvite him again, while saying some feely, though accurate, statement about how he’s honored and positively shocked will most definitely lead to the same result.

 

“Yeah, sure,” is what he settles for, even though his mind is reeling because he has no idea what’s happening right now. Derek, looking for an apartment. Asking _him_ to join?

 

“I’ll send you the address,” the wolf says and hangs up.

 

“Great,” Stiles whispers and proceeds to have a minor panic attack.


	2. I See You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the second chapter I promised to upload weeks ago. Sorry, I'm really bad with schedules. 
> 
> Either way, here it is!

The nervous energy coursing through Stiles’ veins makes it hard to remain still in his seat. He’s on his way to the address Derek texted him, feeling more fidgety than he usually already is due to his ADHD, but the restlessness is almost unbearable now. He taps his fingers against the steering wheel almost brutally, needing the feeling of the tingling it leaves behind every time they separate from the rough leather. It doesn’t do much to distract him however, since all he can think about is Derek’s soft voice and the fact that he’s inviting _Stiles_ to be a part of something as personal as this, as if the wolf has actually decided that he’s going to trust Stiles. Maybe only this time, maybe indefinitely – either way, Derek trusts him.

 

And that. That is _huge._ Especially after he recently threw into Derek’s face that he has no idea how to trust people at all.

 

Yeah, not his proudest moment.

 

Not that that means it’s any less true. After everything Kate has done to Derek, it can’t be easy to trust someone again, no matter how much he might want to. Sometimes Stiles can see the longing in Derek’s eyes when he looks at his sister, like he wants to be close to her again but doesn’t know how – as if the years have made him forget, leaving behind nothing more than vivid memories of how it used to be, resurfacing whenever he looks at Cora. It makes Stiles angry to think that it’s a punishment for crimes Derek didn’t commit, a vicious kind of torture that makes it impossible for him to move on.

 

But Cora doesn’t seem to understand that. She’s so often impatient with Derek, angry even, and Stiles can’t help but wonder how their relationship was before Kate destroyed everything. How close were they? As close as Derek was with Laura? The thought leaves a bitter taste in his mouth – how cruel must it seem to Cora to have traveled all this way after so many years, just to come back home to a brother she no longer recognizes and to an uncle who killed her sister in blind rage?

 

Maybe someday, when she’s healed enough to allow herself to be vulnerable, Stiles will ask her about it.

 

He keeps driving for a few more minutes, deep in thought and tapping the steering wheel in sync to the loud music blasting from the car radio, when he catches sight of Derek waiting on the sidewalk next to a parking spot. The wolf is staring down at his feet, at his hands, then he seems to cautiously take in his surroundings before he lowers his gaze to the ground again. Which Stiles interprets as him being very, _very_ nervous, and that he can empathize with, because while Derek is understandably anxious about checking out his potential future living space, Stiles can already feel his heart starting to violently pound in his chest for different reasons.

 

It used to be so easy to ignore all the confusing things he feels about Derek. He never even thought much about it, deeming it to be wiser to just ignore it, but then the beta decided to utterly confuse Stiles by sharing his bed and comforting him after a nightmare, and now Stiles felt torn between wanting to push it and barricading it within the deepest and most secure treasure chest, never to see the light of day again. Sure, with someone like Lydia it wouldn’t be much of a big deal because she’s mostly comfortable with physical contact and emotions, but everything about Derek screams that he isn’t, and that makes it a _huge_ deal. Not just for Stiles, but for Derek as well.

 

The beta looks up a lot later than Stiles expects him to, as if the nervousness is clouding his wolf senses and he only now picked up on the sound of the jeep. Derek visibly relaxes at the sight of him, detangling his fingers and letting his arms drop to his sides, straightening out his back into a more confident posture. Stiles tries not to think about what it means that something as simple as his presence is enough to calm Derek down.

 

He parks the car and gets out, meeting Derek’s eyes levelly as he lets the door fall shut behind him. “Hey, what’s up, sourwolf?” Stiles says cheerfully, attempting to cover up his racing heart with brash loudness that usually never fails to annoy Derek, but this time, the wolf doesn’t play along. He doesn’t greet him back either, instead he keeps holding Stiles’ gaze with intense green eyes that carry a touch of open vulnerability in them, walls still in place but less impassable now. Stiles has no idea how he’s supposed to react to that, or if he should at all.

 

So Stiles keeps his face neutral as he takes a few steps away from his jeep and closer to Derek, watchful to maintain some feet of distance between them. When he comes to a stand next to Derek, he breaks eye contact and looks behind him at a house almost as big as the Hale House was, covered spotlessly in white paint and a few large windows, some of which have balconies attached to them. The roof is enveloped in dark brown tiles and the front door is of the same color, its material seemingly made of metal, from what Stiles can see at this distance.

 

When Derek says _apartment,_ he means _mansion,_ apparently.

 

“It’s beautiful,” he says to Derek who is looking at the house now as well, a small nod the only indication that he was heard. Silence settles over them once again, but this time, Stiles doesn’t feel inclined to break it – it feels comfortable, peaceful even, as they look at a place that they might call home in the future. _They_ meaning the whole pack, because even though officially it will belong to Derek’s name, it will house them, too.

 

If the beta buys it, at least.

 

“Thank you for coming,” Derek says quietly after a while, as if he doesn’t want to say the words out loud but feels like he should. Stiles turns to look at him, the shock rendering him speechless, mouth hanging slightly open despite no words rushing out. The vulnerability is still very present in Derek’s eyes when he meets his gaze, but there’s a defensiveness as well now, like he isn’t sure if he should pull his walls back up again. Stiles quickly decides that he can’t allow that, not now that Derek is actually making an effort to let Stiles see this side of him, so he closes his mouth for a second and nods slowly.

 

“You’re welcome,” he replies neutrally, making sure not to put much weight into the words. The corner of Derek’s mouth twitches and that’s all the warning Stiles gets before a half-smile forms on the wolf’s lips, open and honest and _radiating._ Even though the boy has never seen it before, it fits him beautifully, as if it has always belonged there and only now found its way back home. He grins back immediately, like it has a contagious effect on him, which, for the record, _it does,_ and a few seconds pass before Stiles realizes that he has been openly staring at Derek’s lips for way too long to be normal.

 

He clears his throat and looks away, embarrassment making him flush and feel dizzy from abrupt palpitations, but before he can rebuke himself for being such an obvious idiot, another car parks next to Stiles’. A man that looks suspiciously like a real estate agent exits. He steals a glance at Derek to confirm his assumption, but he’s stunned into silence when he sees the look on his face – lips slightly parted, brows frowning in confusion, yet his green eyes are meeting his, full of emotions that look too close to desperation and pain, but Stiles doesn’t fully dare to interpret them as such. Derek looks so lost and more broken than ever before, and it makes the boy choke on his next intake of breath.

 

Did he do something wrong?

 

He opens his mouth to ask, but the unknown person interrupts him: “Derek Hale?”

 

Oh, right. Real estate agent.

 

Derek snaps his gaze away from Stiles and turns to look at the agent instead. A fake smile plasters itself onto his lips, one that would have surely cracked Stiles up if not for the bewilderment having ahold of him, racing thoughts trying to figure out what the hell Derek’s expression meant.

 

If it was disgust instead, Stiles would have no problem to figure out that Derek obviously has no interest in anything that made the boy stare at his lips so intently, but desperation? And pain? Those are completely different things that Stiles has no idea how to interpret in this context. Turns out, he has no chance to do that right now anyway because the agent – after a short round of introductions that Stiles naturally misses, so Derek has to introduce him instead, and the way his name rolls off of Derek’s tongue definitely doesn’t help his pounding heart – waves them over to the house and unlocks the door for them to enter.

 

If Stiles thought the exterior of the house is beautiful, it’s nothing compared to how it looks on the inside. The walls are painted white, just like the outside of the house, appearing blank in a way that doesn’t make it look naked. The main hall has high ceilings and a huge, dark and elegant looking flight of stairs leading upwards into another hallway. It looks vast and abandoned, but Stiles knows that they can change that quickly if Derek lets him and Lydia decorate the interior, so he’s not worried about that.

 

A look at Derek tells Stiles that he’s as mesmerized by this house as he is.

 

The agent leads them into a gigantic room on the right, one that he announces to be the living room, and though it’s as undecorated as the main hall and simply houses high white walls and a single fireplace, it makes Stiles involuntarily imagine what this place might look like if the pack lived here.

 

He can see them turning this place into a home, filling out the empty spaces and replacing the silence with the sound of the living, so loud that Stiles is sure that even his human ears would ring from it. He imagines the pack meetings being held here instead of at Derek’s current weird apartment, the large sofa pushed against one side and Scott standing in front of it, a proud alpha looking at his pack with utmost admiration in his eyes, hands gesturing while he talks about anything and everything that he deems relevant enough to share. The natural lights already give this room a more inviting look than Derek’s place, not that that’s particularly hard. To Stiles’ absolute surprise – after weeks of mostly being absent – happiness settles in his heart, so vibrant that he swears he could reach out to his old self and welcome it back into his mind again if he just tried hard enough, and he can feel the beginning of a smile form on his lips before he can stop it.

 

But it drops immediately when he looks at Derek.

 

The beta’s eyes seem hollow and dark, not much different to his usual brooding look, but Stiles hasn’t spent the past years studying him for nothing – he can spot the sadness in the way Derek allows himself to hunch over slightly, like the weight of his pain is too much to carry now and he’s giving in under it, ready to collapse at any second.

 

Stiles won’t stand for that.

 

He steps forward, reaching a hand out and resting it between Derek’s shoulder blades, and he ignores how the wolf instinctively flinches at his touch before relaxing a little, like he wants Stiles to know that this is _okay_ but not something that he’s used to. And that’s funny, Stiles can’t help but think drily, because these past few days have already been anything but usual for the both of them anyway.

 

It’s hard not to read more into this as he allows his fingers to brush against Derek’s skin through his shirt, heart beating faster again like it always does when he’s this close to Derek, eyes trained on the side profile of the beta’s face in hopes of seeing the darkness seep out of him. Though his hopes seem to be in vain at first, a few more seconds pass until suddenly, there is a change: Derek pushes back against Stiles’ hand gently, allowing the fingers to press deeper into his skin for a long moment, before he takes one deep breath and steps away from him. An agonizingly slow second passes with neither of them moving, then Derek’s turning sideways to meet Stiles’ eyes, his ever-present facade back in place.

 

Stiles isn’t sure if the facade instead of the open sadness is better in any way. In fact, he highly doubts it, but the hardness of Derek’s stare tells him that this is not a topic to be discussed right now, so he keeps his mouth shut, if only reluctantly.

 

They look at each other silently for a few moments, and Stiles is glad that the agent has already left the room because this feels way too intimate to share with a person that isn’t either of the two of them. Stiles is trying hard to keep a neutral face despite knowing that Derek must hear his rapidly beating heart, but it’s like the wolf doesn’t even notice. He just nods once, as though he’s decided something, and drops the unvoiced subject.

 

“Let’s look at the rest of it,” he says and is out the door the next second, leaving Stiles behind to stare after him.

 

He quiets the thoughts in his head and the beating of his heart vehemently, because this right now? _Not the time._

 

Instead of following, Stiles stays behind and looks at the room again, really looks at it, and he can’t believe how he hasn’t seen it earlier: It looks like what he imagines the Hale House to have looked like before the fire, wooden walls covered in white paint, a huge window with bright curtains attached to it, a fireplace in the middle of one of the walls, and it reminds him so much of the burned remains that it makes him choke up with sadness, grief for a loss that isn’t even his engulfing him.

 

No wonder Derek reacted like that. Stiles doesn’t want to imagine what thoughts must have shot through his head, which memories of his family that he will never see again flooded him and made him experience such pain again.

 

But he can’t let Derek see how much this is affecting him in return, so he takes a few deeps breaths and forces the thoughts away.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The rest of the house-viewing goes by uneventfully. They look at the other rooms and listen to what the agent has to say about them – or at least Derek does because Stiles can’t concentrate enough for that, but he’s sure he will hear all the details about it later, if Derek decides to go with this house. Which Stiles hopes he will, because while this house seems to have uncomfortable resemblances to the Hale House, maybe the pack can help replace those awful memories with something more bearable, something beautiful and _alive._

 

If Derek lets them.

 

And if he decides against this house, Stiles will accept that as well.

 

It’s dark once they go outside again, hours having passed since Derek’s phone call and now. Stiles doesn’t know how to read Derek’s expressionless face and it makes him impatient, restlessly tapping his foot up and down against the concrete while he waits for Derek and the agent to finish their goodbyes, so he can pester the wolf with questions and ideas about this house.

 

They are standing next to each other on the sidewalk as they watch the agent get into his car and drive away, speeding off into the night and leaving behind utter silence. But that has never intimidated Stiles, so he turns to Derek and opens his mouth to blurt out what _he_ thinks about the house and all the reasons why Derek should definitely buy it, but the wolf beats him to the punch: “I need time to think.”

 

He turns to meet Stiles’ eyes. Where there was open vulnerability before, he just looks closed off now, walls back in place and keeping a safe distance from Stiles. And though it hurts, Stiles thinks he understands – it’s not easy to trust someone every hour of the day after years of refusing to trust anyone. It will take time to get used to letting someone in like that again. He tries not to take it personally, so he just nods and looks down at the car key in his hand instead, ignoring the stinging in his heart.

 

“I guess I’ll get going then,” Stiles says and gestures with the hand holding his key toward his jeep, looking up at Derek who only stares back levelly, still no hint of anything on his face, so he continues to fill the silence: “Feel free to call me once you make a decision regarding this house, or if you want to check out another one.”

 

Derek only nods and walks away, getting into the Camaro across the street that Stiles has only now noticed, and he drives off immediately, leaving Stiles alone under the dim glow of a street light.

 

He follows the car with his eyes before turning around to look at the house once again, at its dark roof and light walls, the windows, the balconies and the elegant design of the door. And despite wanting to be respectful of whatever decision Derek makes, Stiles can hear his heart pleading to call this place home.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When Stiles arrives at home later that evening, he fishes his phone out of his pockets and falls backwards onto his bed, immediately bolting upward into a sitting position again when he sees the amount of missed calls and text messages he got from Lydia during his drive back from the house. His fingers are too fast for his brain to catch up, shaking and dropping his phone a few times before he finally manages to click the call button next to the banshee’s name in his contacts, panic rising and feeling like a suffocating weight on his chest.

 

“Stiles!” Lydia angrily exclaims once she picks up. “I’ve been trying to call you for ten minutes now, what the fuck have you been doing? No, scratch that, we don’t have time for that. You have to come over to Derek’s loft, _now._ ”

 

“What’s wrong–” is all Lydia lets him say before she interrupts him.

 

“No time, get over here! I’ll explain everything then.”

 

She doesn’t hang up though, the line just stays silent for a while. Then Lydia adds in a soft voice: “Shit, I’m sorry, I must be scaring you to death. It’ll be fine, don’t panic, just hurry up and drive save, okay? See you.”

 

Then she hangs up.

 

Stiles’ head is devoid of thoughts as he races through the streets, every other emotion blocked out by the blind panic coursing through him. The adrenaline in his blood is too much to handle and he almost crashes the jeep too often to count, but he barely even notices – there are no properly articulated thoughts in his head, and yet he doesn’t need that to imagine everything that could have happened, every possible way someone in the pack or an innocent bystander might have died a cruel death. Which is not helping the panic attack, not at all.

 

By the time he arrives at Derek’s loft, he’s out of breath and clawing at his throat, as if to rip it open and allow the air in that way, fingernails harshly digging into his skin and maybe even drawing blood, he isn’t sure. All he knows is that he needs to _breathe._

 

He steps out of the car and doubles over, falling to the ground and landing painfully hard on his knees, and this time he’s sure he’s bleeding.

 

Fingers wrap around his wrists and harshly tear his hands away from his throat, squeezing them almost tight enough to break bones, then they carelessly drop them and settle on the sides of Stiles’ head instead, forcing him to tilt it backwards and look up at the person kneeling in front of him.

 

Through the haziness Stiles barely registers Derek looking desperate and brushing his fingers over Stiles’ cheek repeatedly, and it takes the boy a few seconds to realize that the wolf is talking and wiping Stiles’ tears away. Derek’s lips are moving but it all sounds like incoherent noise to Stiles, and when the wolf notices his lack of understanding, his movements turn more desperate, moving from Stiles’ cheek to his throat and back up again, like he doesn’t know what to do to make him breathe again.

 

Then the hands settle at his throat, fingers spanning out over his neck and one of Derek’s thumb pressing against his artery, and suddenly the panic begins to disappear, like there’s a leak somewhere and it’s just dripping out.

 

He can breathe again.

 

Stiles falls forward against Derek, hands braced against his chest and taking desperate lungfuls of shaky breaths and releasing them again, trying to calm down his breathing to a normal frequency.

 

“I’m okay,” Stiles tries to say, but nothing more than a whisper leaves his lips, and he’s still gasping for breath, so the words have no chance to be comprehensible anyway. It’s enough to get Derek’s attention however because he leans forward immediately, closer to the source of Stiles’ words, as if he’s unsure if it was only his imagination or if Stiles has actually said something.

 

“I’m okay,” he rasps out, able to actually say it this time, “it’s okay, I’m fine.”

 

A flash of strawberry blonde hair out of the corners of his eyes is all the warning he gets before Lydia’s arms are wrapping around Stiles from the side, face buried in his neck and involuntarily forcing Derek’s hands away, but not before Stiles can catch a glimpse of them: Thick black veins are visible through the beta’s skin, traveling up to his upper arms and disappearing under the sleeves. Stiles’ mouth falls open and his eyes meet Derek’s over the banshee’s head, finding the shock he’s feeling reflected in the green stare.

 

He wasn’t aware that a werewolf can not only help with pain, but also with emotions. And from the look on Derek’s face, neither was he. But unlike Stiles, Derek has been a werewolf since the moment he was born, so if he doesn’t know about it, that means–

 

Yeah, they are definitely going to have to talk to Deaton.

 

A few more moments of intense eye contact pass before he finally registers Lydia whispering broken apologies into his ear, tears dripping down onto his itchy skin and making it uncomfortably warm and wet, but Stiles decides against brushing her off and returns her embrace instead, holding her close to him and breathing her familiar smell in.

 

He can’t ignore the itchiness of his throat for long though, so he gently pushes her away and touches the burning skin, finding drops of wetness there that are either Lydia’s tears or his own blood, and he can’t be certain until he raises his hands and looks at them to see dark colored blood covering the tips of his fingers, sticky from being in the process of drying on his skin. He feels sick and ready to throw up all of a sudden, but he has no time to go into another full-blown panic attack at the thought of being desperate enough to scratch his own body open, because Derek’s fingers are wrapping around one of his wrists again and taking the frightening emotion away from him before it can fully build.

 

Stiles stares at the black veins covering Derek’s arm, pulsing with life and writhing underneath his skin like a foreign entity, and he can’t stop himself from raising his free hand and trailing the outlines of them with his fingertips, gentle enough to not put any pressure on them but firm enough to feel the pulse under his skin.

 

A sharp gasp to his left reminds him of Lydia’s presence, and he rips his hands away as if he’s been burned, standing up and taking a step back from the both of them. That’s when he notices the spectators behind them: The whole pack is staring at him with wide and concerned eyes, but there’s still a careful distance in their expressions that hurts Stiles every time he sees it, despite having been the norm for weeks now.

 

He can’t let the Nogitsune go and they can’t seem to, either.

 

All of them except for Lydia and Derek. And Cora, apparently.

 

Stiles barely registers the relief at seeing all of the pack safe and alive, because he can feel himself closing off, too, as he takes another step away from Lydia and Derek and toward the rest of the pack. He’s too tired to try for a smile now, the panic attack having drained him and making him feel utterly exhausted, so he just shrugs past them and goes up the stairs, waiting for the sounds of footsteps to follow, but there are none. And that just makes him feel even more excluded because he knows that probably means that Lydia has decided to rebuke them all for being so insensitive in his presence, even though Stiles doesn’t need her to take care of his problems.

 

But he could never be angry at her. Stiles knows that she’s only doing what she deems to be the right thing, carefully thought through and weighed against profit and loss. Nonetheless, he can feel the anger replace the emptiness, making him even more miserable because he knows that anger isn’t the actual emotion that he’s experiencing right now, but it is still so much easier to deal with.

 

Stiles doesn’t look at any of them when they enter the room a few minutes later. He’s sitting on the couch, pressed against the armrest to make himself as small as possible, feeling sorry for his continuous presence in these pack meetings, even though Scott has told him time and time again that he shouldn’t, that they just need some time to get over it and then things will surely go back to normal.

 

Sometimes he really envies Scott for being so obliviously optimistic.

 

Stiles can’t imagine everything returning to how it was before. Not after all the terror he’s caused and the blood on his hands, even if it isn’t truly him that killed all those innocent people. He can feel his mind wandering off to thoughts of Allison again, to her bright smile and flashing teeth, her dark brown eyes and shiny hair, and to the faint noise of Lydia’s banshee scream ringing through his head when he wasn’t even fully conscious, the one that keeps repeating in his mind whenever he allows himself just so much as a second of thinking about Allison, over and over, like a broken cassette that got stuck in place.

 

He’s ripped out of his thoughts when the sofa gives in slightly under a weight next to him. Stiles is surprised to see Cora when he looks up, a soft smile on her lips as he meets her eyes. He’s not sure if he wants to return it, heaviness pulling at his mind like an anchor trying to drown him at sea, so he doesn’t. The boy settles for a simple nod instead, but it doesn’t seem to be enough, if the way the smile slowly fades from Cora’s lips is anything to go by. There’s worry in the crease of her brows, something Stiles is surprised to be at the receiving end of, and yet he’s too tired to feel any warmth about the fact that Derek’s sister openly cares for him.

 

His chest aches at the brief glimpse he catches of the sadness in Cora’s eyes when he turns away from her, but it leaves as quickly as it showed, drowning in the senseless noise in Stiles’ head.

 

At first, it doesn’t register to Stiles that the pack meeting has already started – it takes a gentle nudge from the beta next to him to bring him back to the present. Lydia is standing next to Scott, the alpha watching her closely as she talks about something that Stiles is only now catching up on.

 

“There were four of them. From their glowing eyes and menacing smiles, I’m guessing they are all intend on violently killing us in some kind of way. I’m sorry to say this, Scott, but the option of trying to talk things through with them and resolving this peacefully is out the window.”

 

“Wait, what?” Stiles hears himself speak. “Sorry, four of _what?_ There are more werewolves in town?”

 

“Not werewolves,” Lydia replies impatiently, though her voice is still softer than he expects it to be. “They were mages, from what I can tell. At least I’m pretty sure they used magic, but I don’t know what they are. Dangerous though, that’s not in question.”

 

“Why do you think they used magic?” Scott asks.

 

“Because they gave Kira and me this,” and with that, Lydia pushes the sleeve up her left arm, revealing a single word engraved into the side of her wrist in black, like a tattoo: _Fire._

 

Kira mirrors her and reveals a similar marking on her wrist, in the same exact spot, but hers reads _Earth._

 

“They didn’t even touch us,” the kitsune adds in a whisper, like she’s afraid of the mages overhearing and showing up again. She seems shaken, eyes wide and fearful.

 

The fox still seems like a complete stranger to him, even though they have known each other for a few months now. All he knows about Kira are her absolutely terrifying powers and her persisting fear, like she still doesn’t trust herself to survive and has to question her abilities continuously, despite having proven time and time again that she’s as deadly as the rest of their supernatural pack members.

 

As if sensing Stiles looking at her, she turns to meet his gaze.

 

He looks away.

 

Allowing his eyes to take in his surroundings, he notices the rest of the pack sitting on the couch next to Cora – everyone apart from Derek, that is.

 

He looks back at Lydia, keen on listening to the rest of what she has to say, but a movement out of the corner of Stiles’ eyes makes him flinch hard, whipping around quickly enough to induce a barely noticeable headache. He’s so surprised to see Derek leaning against the wall right next to him that he just keeps staring, looking up into a pair of green eyes that seem more concerned than annoyed when the wolf meets his gaze.

 

Derek raises a single eyebrow at him, but it doesn’t seem to promise a murderous intent. He just looks curious instead, head tilted to the side slightly, something that Stiles finds weirdly endearing, which is definitely not something he should be thinking about now, so he clears his throat and turns back to Lydia, ignoring the pounding of his heart.

 

Even though he tries to listen, he can’t understand a single word of what the banshee is saying – his mind keeps jumping back to Derek’s presence right next to him, and Stiles finds himself wondering why the wolf would seek his proximity like this, choosing to settle close to the boy instead of joining the rest of the pack on the couch.

 

His thoughts get interrupted when he notices the couch’s backrest giving in under an extra weight. There’s a short pause, Stiles’ heartbeat in his throat and racing thoughts so loud he fears the others might hear them, too, when gentle fingers brush against the skin of his neck softly and his mind goes blank. Derek repeats the gesture while Stiles holds his breath, anxious about somehow ruining this moment if he just so much as breathes wrong. A second passes, then the fingers push against his skin more determinedly, varying between simply resting and caressing softly.

 

A shiver goes through his body, cheeks flushing in embarrassment, but Derek doesn’t take his hand away, though he stops moving his fingers – they simply settle against Stiles’ skin now, offering a warmth and comfort Stiles wasn’t aware he is seeking from Derek.

 

Or yes, he has been aware of it. He just never allowed himself to think about it.

 

The anxiety settles, and Stiles is curious to see if Derek is using his werewolf abilities again to calm him down, but before he can turn around to check, Cora takes her eyes off Lydia to look at the two of them, quizzical expression on her face quickly turning into amusement. Stiles’ heartbeat must have alerted her, but upon catching sight of her brother’s fingers on the nape of the boy’s neck, she must have decided to draw her own conclusions from it. Cora raises her eyebrows suggestively at them, causing Stiles’ cheeks to flush even more.

 

He looks away and doesn’t check to see how Derek reacts, trying to focus on Lydia instead, ignoring both Hales as best he can.

 

Now is not the time to think about anything concerning Derek and Stiles’ confusing attraction to him.

 

Stiles refuses to look around to check if anyone else has looked over to him in concern. The uncertainty and promise of nothing more than disappointment is enough to convince himself to keep his eyes on Lydia.

 

“There’s nothing much we can do about them for now, so I suggest traveling in twos to prevent that any of us ends up being alone and at their mercy. Since we’re not children anymore, I’m sure you can all pair up on your own without any outside help.”

 

With that, she smiles briefly at the pack, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. Stiles can deduce more from that than Lydia is willing to reveal, can see the tension in her shoulders indicating stress and fear, but he doesn’t say anything. Not that he has a chance to, anyway – the strawberry blonde refuses to meet his eyes as she forces herself in between Cora and Malia, looking at Scott like an obedient beta at their alpha.

 

“You and me, then?” he hears Cora say next to him to Lydia, but it doesn’t really sound like a question, more like a statement, as though it has already been agreed upon.

 

Stiles doesn’t have time to hear the banshee’s reply because Derek moves his fingers to turn the boy’s gaze to him gently, looking down at him with a questioning tilt to his head. “Is it okay if we–?”

 

“Yes!” Stiles exclaims and immediately cringes at his obvious enthusiasm, clearing his throat too loudly. “I mean, yeah, sure, why not. It’s the only option anyway, not the we have much choice, given that Malia would never pair up with you, or me, and I’m pretty sure Danny can’t really stand me and he doesn’t know you at all, so I suppose it’s the only logical–”

 

“Good,” Derek interrupts, a soft smile spreading on his lips that is barely even there and would certainly go unnoticed by anyone else, but Stiles sees it. He tries not to wonder about what it means that Stiles can spot Derek’s smiles with no difficulty at all now. The boy finds himself returning it before he even fully registers it, feeling his mouth stretch out and baring his teeth in a show of happiness and not as a threat, and Derek copies him, ducking his head as though he’s embarrassed by it.

 

And damn. _He’s beautiful._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Just as he expected, Scott is pairing up with Kira, Lydia and Cora decided to stick together and Malia and Danny settled for each other as well. They all separated right after that, saying their goodbyes after brief discussions about where to stay for the night, since it’s agreed upon that not even nights are to be spent alone, and it’s this realization and the fact that they are now alone that sets Stiles’ cheeks on fire again. He jumps up from where he was still leaning against Derek’s hand and runs his own through his hair nervously.

 

“So…” Stiles says, looking anywhere but at Derek.

 

“We’ll stay at your place,” the wolf says neutrally, as if it’s just that easy. “Come, I’ll drive,” he adds as he walks by Stiles.

 

“What about my jeep?”

 

There’s a short silence, Derek stopping and turning to stare at him like he’s stupid. “I’m driving your jeep.”

 

What? Why would he want to drive Stiles’ jeep? When it hits him, anger rushes through his veins, useless and mostly senseless, but the thought of Derek deciding that Stiles isn’t in the right mind set to drive because he had a panic attack earlier makes him furious.

 

“I can drive my own car, thank you very much,” he bites out, trying to pass Derek and head for the door, but a hand on his wrist stops him.

 

“Stiles, I’m just trying to help.”

 

He sounds beaten, resigned, as though he knows that his words won’t make a damn difference, and if Stiles was a better person, he would back down now.

 

But he’s not.

 

“There’s nothing that requires your help!” Stiles exclaims, turning around and getting too close to Derek’s face, only a hair’s breadth of distance between them. He flinches away immediately, like the close proximity has burned him and he’s trying to reduce the damage as well as he can, but Derek just follows him, holding tight to his arm and not allowing the boy to back further away. There’s anger in the wolf’s eyes, but it’s not cold or violent – it looks fierce and pained, close to the expression he wore when they stood in front of the house they were about to view, like there’s something hidden in it that Stiles just can’t see.

 

He swallows heavily and stays put, nervous to make any movement at all because he doesn’t have a clue about what is happening right now, even though his pounding heart begs to differ.

 

Some more heartbeats pass in utter silence before Derek just drops his wrist and steps back, holding Stiles’ car keys in front of the boy’s face.

 

“I’m driving,” he states in a tone that tells Stiles not to argue with him. Then he leaves.

 

Stiles is left staring after him, wondering how the hell Derek managed to reach into his hoodie’s pocket and retrieve the keys without him noticing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The car ride is silent and uncomfortable, filled with a tension worse than Stiles has ever experienced, but he’s too proud to break it by saying something. So he stares out the front shield instead, bouncing his leg and fiddling with the strings of his hoodie, refusing to even look in Derek’s direction. Stiles is still angry, but it feels more like exhaustion now, like he has been pushed past his breaking point and he just wants this day to finally end.

 

His thoughts keep wandering back to the strange encounter Lydia told the pack about. Strangely hooded creatures with weird powers? It sounds like every generic opponent Stiles can think of and he sighs mentally at all the heavy research work he knows is before him. He drags a hand over his face none too gently, feeling like he wants to rub his skin off in his frustration.

 

“We have to go see Deaton tomorrow.”

 

In his surprise at hearing the wolf’s voice, Stiles whips around to face him, momentarily forgetting about his anger and lowering his hand absent-mindedly. He stares at Derek and nods slowly, silently showing his agreement, before he realizes that Derek isn’t looking at him. For a brief moment he contemplates not responding at all, but then he shoves his pride away and decides to be a decent human being after all.

 

“So I was right – you haven’t heard about anything like that.”

 

Derek doesn’t reply, just nods once.

 

“And you think Deaton has?”

 

This time, a frown settles between the wolf’s brows as he looks over at Stiles for a fleeting second. “If not him, then who?”

 

“Good point,” Stiles mutters, not really keen on keeping the conversation going.

 

Unlike the beta, apparently.

 

“Have you told your dad I’m staying over?”

 

Shit. He forgot about that entirely. His mind has been so occupied with the weird mages and Derek’s annoying behavior that it completely missed his attention.

 

Wordlessly, Stiles fishes his phone out of his pocket and dials his dad’s number.

 

He can’t help the anxiety taking a hold of him, like it always does whenever he just even attempts to have something like small talk with his dad, something that should be simple but now is so far from that. It’s enough to make him end the call immediately, not even waiting for the first ring. Instead he resigns to typing a text message, ignoring the absolutely not subtle side glance Derek throws him.

 

Once Stiles is done, he stares out the window again and decidedly doesn't look at Derek for the rest of the car ride.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Where he expected confusion or dislike for what his dad surely thinks of as another one of Stiles’ stupid ideas, the sheriff just looks mostly neutral when he opens the door, the slight twitch of the corners of his mouth the only indicator that he might actually consider this situation as something favorable. The completely unexpected smile his dad throws Derek’s way when he sees him shocks Stiles into silence, freezing him to the spot and forcing him to numbly watch as the beta returns the smile hesitantly and politely holds out a hand for the sheriff to shake. His dad seems relieved to see Derek, still smiling while gripping the wolf’s hand tightly, and Stiles has no idea what to make of that.

 

Maybe he’s entered a parallel universe or something.

 

The smile is still on his dad’s lips when he turns to Stiles, but his eyes seem strangely empty now, like he’s carefully concealing his emotions and mostly succeeding, if not for the open display of sadness that just won’t go away.

 

Stiles can’t say that time makes it any easier. It’s been weeks now and it still hurts more than anything else.

 

He gives a half-hearted attempt at returning the smile before brushing past his dad and going up the stairs to his room. Curiosity makes him stop in his tracks though and he finds himself standing still at the top of the stairs, hiding as well as he can – he’s aware that Derek will know he’s there, but his dad won’t.

 

There’s mumbling that he can’t quite make out as Derek and his dad move from the door further into the house, but when they are close enough to the stairs, he can finally pick up clear sentences.

 

“It shouldn’t be this hard,” Stiles hears his dad sigh, and he doesn’t need context for pain to settle in his chest.

 

“He’s the strongest person I know,” replies Derek’s voice, steady and sure, like it’s the only truth he’s ever known and he wants Stiles’ dad to know that. Stiles hears himself gasp, too loud in the quiet that follows Derek’s words, and he hastily backs off toward his room as silently as he can, hoping that his dad hasn't picked up on it.

 

The way he just keeps talking indicates that he hasn’t.

 

“Thank you for staying. You make this place seem safe again, now that you’re here.”

 

Stiles doesn’t wait for the silence after that to be broken – he goes to his room and puts on his pajamas, gets under the blanket and buries himself beneath it, pulling it up and over his head, hands pressed against his eyes to keep the tears back. He feels angry at himself for allowing this place to turn into something that his dad no longer considers safe, for making his dad think he needs supernatural help to keep their fragile peace together. But most of all he is angry about the wall between him and his dad, the wall that grew higher with every secret that he has yet to come clean about, stacking up until it’s become this unsurpassable barrier that neither of them knows how to demolish.

 

He’s scared that it will stay like this forever.

 

His breath catches in his throat when he hears the door open slowly, but that’s the only reaction Stiles gives. He stays under the blanket, hands held over his eyes like useless shields, and he only lowers them when he hears the door close with a soft click. A second later the blanket is being pulled away from his face gently, but Stiles refuses to open his eyes, stubbornly holding on to the dark world behind his closed lids.

 

“It’s okay,” Derek’s hushed voice says next to the bed, coming closer as he settles on the other side of Stiles’ bed. Stiles feels gentle fingers take a hold of his wrist, like they so often have these past 24 hours, and he can feel the sadness fade away slowly before he violently pulls away and sits up, opening his eyes to fix Derek with a glare.

 

Stiles can barely make out the wolf’s face in the darkness, but the brightness of the street lights coming through his window is enough to know where his eyes are.

 

“Don’t do that,” he hisses, not sure if he’s truly angry or just really, _really_ scared. “You can’t just play with something when we have no idea what it means.”

 

“Deaton will tell us tomorrow,” comes the reply, still spoken in nothing more than a whisper, as if Derek is trying to calm a raging beast with his soft voice. It makes Stiles angry again, but he’s too tired to hold onto it, feeling it slip away and fade into nothing as the sadness comes back, forcing tears into his eyes that he blinks away forcefully.

 

Stiles nods and turns away from Derek, laying down once again on his side and pulling the blanket up to his chin this time. He expects the beta to leave, sure that his dad has assigned him the couch as his place to sleep, but Derek just shuffles closer to him and pulls at the blanket gently, a silent request to share.

 

It makes his heart pound violently in his chest, nervous all over again, and after a few seconds of misplaced stubbornness pass, he lets go of the covers and allows Derek to pull them over his form as well, pushing closer into the middle until his chest brushes Stiles’ back. It takes everything in him to suppress a shiver at that barely there contact.

 

Because he’s definitely mature and not an idiot trying to cover up his racing heart at all, Stiles asks: “Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping downstairs?”

 

“Your dad said he doesn’t mind.”

 

“Are you sure? That does not sound like my dad _at all._ ”

 

“He’s _tired,_ Stiles,” Derek says more seriously than Stiles is ready for, guilt settling heavy in his gut at the words. “I think it comforts him to know you’re not alone.”

 

Stiles doesn’t reply because he doesn’t know what to say to that. He gets it. Of course he does, but he has no idea how to tell his dad that his constant concern for him makes this world feel as fragile as it was with the Nogitsune in his head, so unreal and constantly controlled by someone else, surely to fall apart if he just relaxes for one second and unknowingly allows someone else to take over.

 

He involuntarily shudders at the memories.

 

An arm settles around his waist heavily, pulling him back against a chest that shouldn’t feel as familiar as it does, and despite the anxiousness in his veins, Stiles breathes a sigh of relief at the comfort Derek’s closeness brings him. He pushes back slightly before he even registers having made the decision to, and he feels a blush rising to his cheeks, only mildly helped by the way Derek’s arm immediately tightens around him and the wolf buries his face in Stiles’ hair, like it’s completely normal and a thing they just _do._

 

Stiles is too tired to lose his head about it, and he falls asleep before he has time to fully realize he’s closed his eyes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Breakfast is awkward.

 

It’s Saturday and Stiles’ dad has to go to work in about half an hour, but John still insists on having breakfast with his son and their temporary superhuman family addition.

 

Even without werewolf powers, Stiles can feel the uncertainty radiating off of Derek from where he’s sitting next to him, can see it in the way he holds himself too straight and how he determinedly doesn’t break eye contact with the sheriff, trying to impress rather than intimidate. Derek’s hand forming a remarkably loose fist under the table is the only indication that maintaining this behavior is challenging for him, but his dad can’t see it because he’s sitting on the other side of the table, and so Stiles is the only witness to it. It takes everything in him to not reach out and cover Derek’s hand with his own, to offer soothing touches in order to calm the wolf’s obvious anxiety.

 

Stiles doesn’t even want to try to unpack that.

 

There’s still a residue of tension between them after waking up together in his bed about an hour prior, tangled up in a mess of limbs that had Stiles blushing furiously while Derek seemed mostly unaffected, like this is an occurrence that didn’t surprise him at all. And in a way, Stiles isn’t actually too fazed by it either – hell, they already fell asleep like this twice now, and yet waking up like this feels more intimate in some way. It’s one thing to seek comfort in each other when they are too tired to really think of the consequences, but dealing with the aftermath isn’t that easy.

 

Or at least that’s what Stiles thought until Derek huffed a sigh, unwrapped his arms from the boy and announced he was going to join the sheriff downstairs to prepare breakfast. And then the wolf just disappeared.

 

And now that he thinks about it, chewing slowly on a piece of toast and staring into nothing while Derek and his dad still keep to their small talk, it kind of makes sense. Derek was raised by a pack of werewolves – of course physical intimacy shouldn’t be much of an issue to him, but ever since all the fucked up shit Kate did, Stiles can’t imagine it still being as easy as it was before. Sure, the beta doesn’t really seem affected by their new-found intimacy, but Stiles knows all too well what terrifying things an effective mask can hide.

 

“How’s your sister?” Stiles’ dad asks casually. Derek goes still, like he hasn’t expected that question to come up and isn’t prepared to answer it, so Stiles chimes in without a second thought.

 

“She’s really good at school. I’d argue she’s close to knocking Lydia off her pedestal, but then Lydia would probably strangle me in my sleep or something,” he lies effortlessly, topping it all off with an easy laugh that his dad seems to buy, nodding slightly, though his inquisitive stare tells Stiles that he doesn’t really believe him, or at least not fully.

 

Nevertheless, John drops the subject.

 

Truth is, Stiles still doesn’t how if Cora is anywhere near being okay yet. She’s definitely not doing great, that’s not a secret, but he feels like something about her attitude has changed – Cora is less defensive these days, though that doesn’t really say much because she’s still pretty violent and angry, and yet there’s always a second of hesitation now before she acts on her impulses. It’s not much of a change, but she’s trying and that counts for something.

 

Derek and his sister still aren’t really close. Derek has gotten too used to pushing people away, and Cora doesn’t allow her walls down enough to let her brother back in. It’s frustrating to watch and sometimes Stiles wants to sit them down and explain to them that they just have to _talk_ and everything will be fine after that, but both of the Hale siblings are too self-destructive and stubborn for their own good and Stiles doesn’t want to become collateral damage to their issues.

 

Or so he tells himself. If he is honest with himself, Stiles knows that he’s arrived at a point where he would probably do just about anything to ensure Derek’s life is easier, but he would never willingly admit that.

 

“Well,” his dad says, making Stiles snap out of his thoughts, “crime won’t solve itself, so I’m afraid I have to go.”

 

John gets up from his seat and carries his plate into the kitchen, then he reappears in the doorway and looks at Derek. “It was nice talking to you, Derek,” he says softly, to Stiles and Derek’s surprise, though the beta’s surprise is more evident – his eyes widen ever so slightly and he seems to fumble for words for a few seconds, but then a shy smile settles on his lips.

 

“It was nice talking to you, too, sheriff.”

 

“Please, call me John.”

 

Stiles is shocked. He wasn’t expecting this to go so well.

 

Derek nods and smiles again, and Stiles’ heart is just about ready to experience sudden cardiac arrest.

 

Then his dad fixes him with a knowing stare, and Stiles barely has time to think _Shit, I’m fucked,_ when his dad rests a hand on his shoulder and squeezes a little too tightly not to be a subtle warning.

 

“I’ll see you later, son,” John says, still with that knowing look in his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything else. His touch lingers on Stiles’ shoulder for a short while though, as if he’s contemplating adding something after all, but in the end he just sighs and says goodbye to the both of them before leaving without another word.

 

They sit in silence as they hear the car drive off, Stiles’ heart still in overdrive and Derek probably wondering what the fuck has gotten into him, when Derek’s phone suddenly rings, making them both flinch.

 

“What?” Derek asks almost aggressively into the phone, surprising both Stiles and he with the violence in his voice. The beta grimaces and clears his throat.

 

“What do you want?” Those words aren’t exactly nice either, but at least Derek’s voice is a little more neutral this time.

 

There’s a response at the other end of the line that Stiles can’t hear, but apparently it’s enough to taunt Derek into aggressiveness again, free hand clenching into a fist that seems ready to punch a whole into the person on the phone.

 

“Peter,” Derek says lowly, and Stiles isn’t sure if it’s meant to be an informative statement for him or a warning for his uncle. Either way, Stiles understands the sudden hostility now.

 

Peter is still pretty much a mystery to him. Not that he wants it any other way, he’s perfectly fine with knowing barely anything about Derek’s crazy uncle, but he keeps popping up at random times after weeks of silence and it seems to drag Derek down every single time. Stiles is pretty sure Peter does it on purpose, for whatever sick reason, and it makes him furious for reasons he can’t quite explain.

 

Or yes, he can. He cares about Derek – it’s as easy and as complicated as that.

 

Without really noticing it, Stiles inches closer to Derek and the phone pressed against his ear, trying to listen in on what his uncle is saying, but he immediately stops in his tracks when the wolf catches his eye and raises an eyebrow at him. Stiles swallows and moves back hastily, an apology already on the tip of his tongue, when Derek lowers the phone from his ear and puts Peter on speaker, still fixing him with a curious stare.

 

Stiles swallows again and looks away.

 

“Thanks for inviting me to the pack meeting, by the way,” Peter says snidely, like he’s actually offended that no one asked him to come.

 

“You wouldn’t have shown up anyway,” Derek counters impatiently.

 

“Too late to find that out now. Either way, that’s not the reason I’m calling.” His tone changes all of a sudden, going from annoyingly chipper to sober and calm, completely unlike the Peter Stiles has gotten somewhat used to. Without having to hear the next words, Stiles already knows that it can’t be anything good.

 

“I think you should talk to Cora about what happened in South America, before she came to look for you.”

 

Derek is silent after that, visibly distressed by whatever Peter is implying. Stiles has no idea what his uncle is on about, and, after studying Derek’s face more closely, the boy is pretty sure neither does he.

 

“Can you be more specific, maybe?” Stiles decides to join the conversation, not even trying to sound anything but hostile, and his words are met with laughter almost instantly.

 

“Stiles, what a pleasure.”

 

He refuses to respond to that.

 

“Rude,” Peter mutters, though he sounds amused. He sobers up quickly again, however. “I know Cora hasn’t told you anything about what happened when she decided to come back to Beacon Hills, dear nephew, otherwise you wouldn’t be in the unknown about the newest monsters who decided to grace Beacon Hills with their presence now. It wasn’t as easy as packing her things and just leaving, Derek.”

 

“Cut the cryptic bullshit, Peter,” Stiles snaps. “Say what you mean, or we’ll hang up.”

 

Peter laughs again. “You let the boy speak for you now?”

 

Surprisingly, Derek stays quiet.

 

“Fine,” the former alpha grumbles. “I asked around, concerned uncle that I am, and apparently there was… an incident when Cora announced to her pack that she was going to leave. And it wasn’t just an argument, either – as far as I’ve heard, it escalated into a fight and one of the pack’s mages died as a result of that. I don’t know if Cora killed them, I just know that the pack blames her for it.”

 

A mage of Cora’s old pack dies and now they are being haunted by mages? Even though Stiles resents agreeing with Peter, he must admit that can’t be a coincidence.

 

Derek seems to have come to the same conclusion, hollow eyes looking down at the phone in his hands with a pain that Stiles hasn’t seen before. The beta looks broken, and it’s not as if Stiles can blame him for it. Learning that his sister potentially is the reason for these weird mages showing up after she maybe killed one of them… that sure as hell can’t be easy.

 

This time, he doesn’t stop himself from reaching out and covering Derek’s loosely curled fist with his own hands, offering comfort Stiles doesn’t know how to give with words. The wolf uncurls his fist without hesitation and turns his palm upwards to bring their hands together, threading his long fingers between Stiles’ slender ones and holding on tight. It’s so intimate and comfortable that it throws Stiles off balance, barely registering that Peter is saying something else, but one glance up into Derek’s eyes snaps him out of his trance immediately – the pain hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s still laid bare in every fiber of the wolf’s body, and Stiles’ heart stings at the sight of it.

 

He has no idea what he’s saying, but he mutters some version of a goodbye and hangs up on Peter, putting the phone down on the table and grasping Derek’s other, now free, hand as well. Derek seems shattered into pieces now, more so than he usually does, and Stiles has no idea where to start picking up the pieces.

 

He _really_ isn’t looking forward to talking to Cora.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: "I See You" by MISSIO


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